Today's plan was relatively simple, start the drive to Birdsville with the goal of making it to the small town of Boulia, somewhere about half way. The drive was easy enough and rather uneventful and surprisingly, I arrived in Boulia before noon. Now Boulia isn't exactly a booming city and I really had no plans or need to visit except that it was simply seemed a nice stopping point on the map. After consulting the information center there Ilearned that they had one main attraction, the Min Min Lights. The Min Min Lights are a bit strange and their story might fall in with stories of supernatural encounters and alien or UFO sightings. However, the information center at Boulia has quite an impressive display complete with animatronic people that walk visitors through these encounters. The basics are this. The Min Min seem to be a sentient being as almost all encounter stories include some notion that the lights, which are typically a ball of green lights, seem to know that the person is there. The other major theme is that the lights choose when, where, and to whom to appear. The display was quite entertaining and well done and interesting whether you believe the stories or not.
Sincei t was only 1:00 I decided to take a look at the map and see if there was anything in the area that might provide somegood birding or be interesting any other way. I was surprised to find quite a large national park that I don't remember ever hearing about before. The park was a bit out of my way, but not too far, so I set off to explore Diamantina National Park. After reading the brochure, Ilearned that the park was an old station, now protected under the park system and contained a nice section of Channel Country. So, off I went.
Upon arriving, the park was fairly nice and I found a nice campsite along the edge of one of the waterholes. Birds seemed to be quite numerous as they often are around waterholes in the middle of the bush. The park has a circuit drive that I plan to do tomorrow before I head on south. It is always nice to stumble on seldom visited out of the way places like this. I am glad I decided to detour to the park.
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